Software Testing - Mars Climate Orbiter, redux

Author

Mars Climate Orbiter, redux

Phlip

2006-06-17, 7:09 pm

Testers:

Here's another cautionary tale for the testing community:

"Upside-down Sensors Doomed Craft"
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/brief...enesis_spa.html

The summary:

- NASA wants to send up an orbiter to collect solar wind
- the orbiter must land back on earth
- the blueprint shows the gravity sensors upside down
- nobody caught the problem in review
- assemblers installed the sensors upside down
- hardware testers skipped a centrifuge test

So during reentry, the spacecraft thinks gravity is in the wrong
direction. It over-compensates, and pancakes into the Utah desert.

And the most annoying thing about this accident is it reveals the same
oversights as all of NASA's other investigations have shown...

--
Phlip

Speedmaster

2006-06-17, 7:09 pm

Ouch, I hate to see projects tank because of such simple foul-ups. The
complexity of some of these things is amazing,. One minor oversight can
ruin the entire thing. ;-(

Chris
http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com/

Phlip wrote:
> Testers:
>
> Here's another cautionary tale for the testing community:
>
> "Upside-down Sensors Doomed Craft"
> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/brief...enesis_spa.html
>
> The summary:
>
> - NASA wants to send up an orbiter to collect solar wind
>

Phlip

2006-06-17, 7:09 pm

Speedmaster wrote:

> Ouch, I hate to see projects tank because of such simple foul-ups. The
> complexity of some of these things is amazing,. One minor oversight can
> ruin the entire thing. ;-(

Today's Dilbert may have covered the situation. ;-)

--
Phlip
[url]http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?Z

Land[/url] <-- NOT a blog!!!

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